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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Another "Gee, Who Knew?" Moment, this time on the Detainess at Guantanamo

I don't know about you but I am getting so tired of these "who knew" moments. The truth is many of us did know, just the lefties didn't. This op-ed by By Marc A. Thiessen discusses a report which came out as a Friday night document dump on a holiday weekend shows that 95% are actually people who would kill us on sight if they could. He faults the paper he is writing in for reporting a headline that falsely indicated just the opposite. I'll copy some of it here, then you need to read the whole editorial.

Now an official investigation conducted by the Obama administration -- and unanimously approved by departments of Defense, State, Justice and Homeland Security, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- has concluded that Church was right.

On Friday, while most Americans headed to the beach, the Obama administration unceremoniously released the Final Report of its Guantanamo Review Task Force. The task force found that of the 240 detainees at Guantanamo when Obama took office, roughly 10 percent "played a direct role in plotting, executing, or facilitating" terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. Another 20 percent had "significant organizational roles within al-Qaeda or associated terrorist groups" including "individuals responsible for overseeing or providing logistical support to al-Qaeda's training operations in Afghanistan; facilitators who helped move money and personnel for al-Qaeda . . . and well trained operatives who were being groomed by al-Qaeda leaders for future terrorist operations." Another nearly 10 percent "occupied significant positions within the Taliban regime" or insurgent networks "implicated in attacks on Coalition forces." About 55 percent were rank and file "foreign fighters with varying degrees of connection to al-Qaeda , but who lacked a significant leadership or other specialized role." Only 5 percent did not "fit into any of the above categories."

In other words, 95 percent of those held at Guantanamo are confirmed terrorists.

Amazingly, the press played the report as a vindication for the Obama administration. The headline in Saturday's Washington Post read: "Most detainees low-level fighters." Well, if that was the real news, why wasn't the Obama administration trumpeting the results from the rooftops? Why did they leak the report on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, when the White House typically tries to bury bad news?

Because the report is bad news for the Obama administration and its allies on the left.

For one thing, it means Liz Cheney was right -- the folks she dubbed as al-Qaeda lawyers really are al-Qaeda lawyers. The task force "assembled large volumes of information from across the government . . . [and] examined this information critically" -- even accepting "written submissions made on behalf of individual detainees by their counsel or other representatives." After an exhaustive review, the Obama administration determined that 95 percent of the al-Qaeda bar's clients are in fact terrorist leaders, operatives or fighters.